Teaching a Cinco De Mayo Preschool STEAM Activity? This tutorial will show you how to engineer and build maracas with your preschoolers. How to make Easter Egg Maracas with your preschoolers using easter eggs while learning to make a musical instrument. Be sure to watch our step by step video at the end! Be sure to read at the end about the musical game we played and loved.
How to Make Easter Egg Maracas
Materials needed:
- Colorful spoons
- Plastic Easter Eggs
- Washi Tape
- Rice
- Beans
- Bird Seed
Additional Ideas: popcorn, lentils, sand
Be as elaborate or as simple as you’d like. I also love the idea of plain white tape and the kids decorating the tape with permanent markers – a fun twist, especially for older kids!
Step by Step:
- Fill Easter Egg with a filling of choice
- Take washi tape and tape the seam of the easter egg
- Place a spoon on either side of the egg (total of 2 spoons per maraca) and tape washi tape around spoons
- As you can see our maracas were totally done by the preschoolers- they certainly aren’t picture perfect but they are so cute! I tore off the washi tape for them in small pieces, just made it easier and the activity to go a bit smoother!
- Fill Easter Egg with a filling of choice
Preschool STEAM Activity – Cinco De Mayo
Are you curious how this activity of making maracas is a STEAM activity? Before I break it down here consider this easy ready on Everything You Need to Know about STEAM Activities!
A little history on the holiday Cinco De Mayo:
Cinco De Mayo is celebrated on May 5th and is most popular with people of Mexican heritage who live in the southern and western states of the United States, and in some areas of Mexico. It is a celebration of Mexican culture and it’s customs.
Although we are not of Mexican heritage, I love Mexican food and the bright colors associated with Cinco de Mayo celebrations. Teaching my little one and learning about this culture through Mexican crafts is a fun way of engaging and learning.
I was inspired by Made Everyday with Dana and her Easter Egg Maracas that I thought this would be a perfect Mexican – Cinco De Mayo steam activity for us to do! We had left over Easter eggs from celebrating Easter last month and with Cinco De Mayo coming up, it was perfect for us to get these maracas made and learn some music!
STEAM is: Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math
Science: We talked about all of our materials and what they are and made of. We then discussed how each material that we put in the eggs makes different sounds when we shake the maraca.
Engineering: We incorporated engineering into the activity where I made them figure out with the materials how we would build maracas, we discussed our materials and what the best way of building was – these little preschoolers are smart ones!
Arts: We discussed colors but not only that we used this activity for music skills. I had the girls match the sounds of each maraca – so they had to shake the maracas to listen and match the sounds. They LOVED this game…we played it over and over and over again!
You can also take about the culture and give a brief history on Cinco De Mayo! The kids could certainly relate when I played some Spanish music for them to hear and play their maracas to! 
More of our Preschool STEAM Activities:
How to Dye Easter Eggs with Shaving Cream
Coffee Filter Easy Science Experiment for Toddlers
Spinner Math Activity for Preschoolers
We are a husband and wife team, pairing our strengths together to teach our preschooler in the most fun and engaging way we possibly can. The mister is a high school educator at Northlake Christian school in Covington Louisiana and over the Innovation Center, which is all things STEAM. I am a SAHM that blogs pretty much everything we do in our little paradise, from what we eat, to where we travel to how we teach our little one. We hope you are inspired to incorporate STEAM into learning with your children.
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